Evidence-Based Strategy

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Optimal nutrition is fundamental to achieving USAID’s wider mission to end extreme poverty and to promote resilient, democratic societies while advancing our national security and prosperity. USAID is maximizing impact by bringing evidence-based  investments in health and food systems and humanitarian response together. 

USAID’s Multi-Sectoral Nutrition Strategy 2014–2025 promotes a multisectoral approach to address both direct and underlying causes of malnutrition, and acknowledges the critical links between humanitarian assistance and development programming to help build resilience to shocks in vulnerable communities. USAID works with partners to scale up effective, integrated nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive interventions, programs, and systems across humanitarian and development contexts.

U.S. Government Global Food Security Strategy 2017-2021, which guides the Feed the Future initiative, includes both a whole-of-government strategy and a USAID-specific implementation plan with both integrated food security and maternal and child health investments. A corresponding Global Food Security Research Strategy guides interagency research investments that include nutrition.  

The U.S. Government Global Nutrition Coordination Plan 2016-2021 was designed to create a platform for coordination and collaboration across relevant U.S. agencies to leverage and enhance our nutrition efforts and investments and to develop a common narrative for the U.S. Government's (USG) goals for global nutrition, facilitating a stronger whole-of-government approach to global nutrition.

MULTI-SECTORAL APPROACH

Nutrition is everyone’s job. Every sector has a role to play to advance global nutrition outcomes:  

Private Sector

Humanitarian Assistance

Health

Agriculture

WASH

Policy

Education

Social Protection

Nutrition programming at USAID is coordinated and implemented by:

Bureau for Global Health

Access to essential nutrition services within the health system can ensure that children and families have optimal diets, stronger immune systems, and a lower risk of disease—improving everyone’s overall health. USAID's Bureau for Global Health helps countries strengthen their ability to deliver and monitor nutrition services—particularly for pregnant and lactating women, children, and newborns—through existing health structures, such as: counseling for breastfeeding and infant and young child feeding practices, monitoring child growth, and providing micronutrient supplements. 

Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance 

USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance provides lifesaving humanitarian assistance, including critical nutrition services, to the world’s most vulnerable and hard to reach populations. Humanitarian crises exacerbate nutritional risks, particularly for women and children, and often lead to an increase in acute malnutrition, or wasting. Emergencies can have a negative impact on infant and young child feeding practices and micronutrient status of vulnerable groups.

Bureau for Resilience and Food Security

Food systems must function to deliver safe, affordable, and nutritious food year-round, particularly for women and children. Leveraging its decades-long leadership in combating global hunger, USAID's Bureau for Resilience and Food Security ensures food systems deliver for nutrition alongside delivering good jobs and greater food security.

Related Sectors of Work 
Nutrition

Last updated: September 10, 2021

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